CHP Cites District for Poor School Bus Upkeep : Transportation: Officials are threatened with criminal charges for failure to conduct regular inspections and keep up-to-date records at Van Nuys facility.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has failed to properly maintain school buses and drivers’ records at its Van Nuys garage, according to the California Highway Patrol, which has threatened busing officials with a criminal complaint.

The 315-bus garage has been cited for violating strict state laws that call for school buses to be inspected every 45 days or 3,000 miles. Drivers have also been lax in submitting accurate daily reports on bus condition, CHP inspectors said.

Earlier this year, district bus garages in San Pedro and Downtown also were cited for having outdated driver certification records. Those violations have since been corrected, the CHP said, and the district has conducted a new training program for all bus drivers and mechanics.

The CHP characterized the problems with the district’s 1,800-vehicle bus fleet--the largest such operation in the nation--as more of a management problem than a mechanical one. Overall, authorities did not find gross mechanical defects in recent annual inspections and said parents should not be alarmed about their children’s safety.

But the poor record-keeping and maintenance schedules at the Van Nuys facility for the second consecutive year raised an alarm in April, CHP authorities said. The district was given 90 days to correct the violations.

“It’s not like the tires are ready to fall off the buses,” said Officer Rick Meier, the CHP’s school safety coordinator. “These are items that, if left unnoticed or left unknown, could go ahead and turn into a serious problem.”

Alan Tomiyama, the district’s director of transportation, said he was confident that the problems have been fixed and that inspectors will soon give a satisfactory rating to the Van Nuys garage.

As many as five mechanics and drivers are in the midst of disciplinary action for failing to follow state maintenance laws, he said, and some staff members have been shifted to keep better track of drivers’ records.

“This is very serious, extremely serious,” Tomiyama said. “It’s safety, safety, safety first. Because we are entrusted with the public safety of children we have to ensure that our buses are in the safest possible condition and our drivers are the safest as possible.”

If the district does not pass a reinspection next month, the CHP wrote in its April report, it will seek a criminal complaint with the Los Angeles County district attorney.

In the 50-year history of the district’s massive bus operation, no student passenger has been killed in an accident, Tomiyama said. Although statistics were not readily available, he said the most common accident involves buses striking children.

CHP inspectors, who surveyed a random sampling of buses at the Van Nuys facility, cited the district for violations primarily dealing with preventive maintenance. Buses were not being inspected on schedule and drivers were not submitting daily bus condition reports.

In the most serious mechanical problems, several bus drivers improperly elevated their seats. If the bus were to hit a hard bump, there is a strong likelihood that the seat would break away from the floor and possibly cause the driver to lose control, inspectors said.

The problems at the Van Nuys facility appear symptomatic of wider district transportation troubles in record-keeping and communication between mechanics and bus drivers, CHP authorities said.

In 1993, inspections found that bus drivers’ licenses and certification records were not being kept up to date. This prompted the CHP to issue an unsatisfactory rating for all six district garages. The others have been cleared in reinspections.

To correct the problems, the district and the CHP embarked on a series of training seminars--ending last week--where CHP officers were called in to review state laws with about 1,500 bus drivers and mechanics.

Meier said the district needs to tighten its chain of command and accountability in areas of bus maintenance so that workers are not able to shift blame.

“I would say they need to look at who is responsible for what,” Meier said.

Big-Time Busing

The Los Angeles Unified School District operates the largest school bus system in the nation. The figures below include both district-owned buses and contracted bus services. Buses: 2,500 Students transported: 80,000 Routes: 2,200 Annual milage: 40 million Gallons of gas: 3.2 million